TikTok application promises its users vertical videos of fifteen seconds, and plenty of music. It is a tool powered by artificial intelligence (AI). Once downloaded the application even before the registration one receives short videos. The content is automatically displayed. They are, above all, videos of people dancing and singing and doing all kinds of stunts.
On average, users spend 52 minutes a day watching the videos, about 200 newspapers. Unlike a friend feed on Facebook or a follower on Twitter, the transmission is generated by an algorithm, which is based on trends and, ultimately, in your preferences.
Who are the users of TikTok?
According to the most recent data available, TikTok had 500 million monthly active users in June 2018. It is still a far cry from the 1,000 million active users of Instagram and 2,000 million Facebook. But in September, the Chinese application surpassed Instagram, Youtube, Facebook and Snapchat in terms of downloads per day.
The majority of the users of TikTok are young. Approximately 41 per cent have between 16 and 24 years old. Two German teenagers of Stuttgart, Lisa and Lena, both 16, are the superstars, with 31.5 million followers.
Among young people, it has become a tool to better cope with boredom. “It is one of the most fun and addictive applications that you may have,” said a user named Matt Burns on Google Play.
TikTok, Chinese application.
ByteDance, rapidly expanding TikTok is the discovery of the Chinese technology company ByteDance. Based in Beijing and founded in 2012, the company develops mobile applications based on machine learning. Your product is Jinri Toutiao, which means “China holders”. This application is able to track users reading habits. It also has several versions for different markets TopBuzz and Helo, available in 14 regional languages of the India, for readers of English.
In 2016, ByteDance released a short video application called Douyin, aimed at the Chinese market. In just one year, it was discharged by 100 million users and became the forerunner of the TikTok app for international users since September 2017.
Since then, ByteDance has expanded rapidly by acquiring the application of video Musical.ly, headquartered in Shanghai, 890 million euros, in December 2017, and merged with two other new companies to create the brand name TikTok August 2018.
It is said TikTok has become the largest platform of the videos in the world community. U.S.-based social media platforms are increasingly nervous by TikTok acceptance on the world market. In November, Facebook quietly launched its own short video application called Lasso in order to counteract the meteoric rise of TikTok.
And security?
The success of TikTok, however, has been overshadowed by a series of security problems and scandals of data leakage. In February, the Federal Trade Commission of the United States fined the company with around 5.7 million dollars for violating the privacy of Minors Act: TikTok collected names, e-mail addresses and other data from children under 13 years old without the consent of the parents.
Naman Aggarwal, who works at a digital rights organization called Access Now, believes that the violation of this right by TikTok goes much beyond United States. “It becomes even more troubling, because certain jurisdictions do not have an adequate data protection framework. There sufficient guarantees when it comes to children,”said Aggarwal. He wants the company to ensure that its consent guidelines are applied regardless of the countries in which they operate. In addition, fears that the platform can even “encourage” children to share “sexually explicit content”.
Aggarwal emphasizes that TikTok and other platforms should “ensure the protection of the rights of the users and provide a safe environment for them”, especially when many children and teenagers use them.
